Monday, December 3, 2007

The Dialogical Path Towards Disaster

The dialectical method ("dialogical reasoning") in practice between Vatican prelates and the rabbis in recent decades, a type of pilpul which has effected radical change in every aspect of Catholicism, was expounded upon by Kasper and Ratzinger mentor, Hasidic philosopher, Martin Buber in his book, I and Thou. I highly recommend this book to those seeking to understand the illogic in "Jewish"-Catholic dialogue. I would say this book is far more influential in the thinking of Benedict, Kasper, et al, than most books commonly ascribed.

A lecture recently given by Massimo Giuliani, a professor of Jewish Studies and Philosophical Hermeneutics at the University of Trent, at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome titled, "The Shoah as a Shadow upon Jewish-Christian Dialogue and as a Stimulus to It" illustrates how this Kabbalistic sorcery works.

It is stated that:

"the Shoah" is "the climax of a centuries-long history of discrimination and persecution against the Jewish people in the West."

Nevertheless, it is stated that this ridiculous alleged truth is painful to acknowledge, but "all ethically formed consciouses" accept this alleged truth and the pain inherent to it and that acceptance of both:

"... are already an integral part of the dialogic commitment. In other words they are already constitutive and constructive elements of that readiness to listen and to interact with the other, without which no dialogue, no encounter is possible. Indeed, in the reciprocal attention of Christians and Jews the memory of the pain that was inflicted and was endured during the Shoah, and the anxiety induced by the gradual realization of the first and the more remote causes that made that tragedy possible, truly represent necessary conditions to ensure that our attention is authentic and the dialogue is sincere."

In other words, the game is rigged. The thesis is discarded and the antithesis becomes the starting point for the dialogue. The dialogue--the dialogical process-- must begin with the "pain of acknowledgement" of alleged Christian guilt for the "Shoah" as it's genesis, rather than, for instance, the Judaic-Bolshevik terror in Russia that preceded "the Shoah," which many would say is a culmination of millennia worth of Judaic discrimination against Christians, but hardly it's climax. No:

"... in this dialogue Christians “begin” from this memory [of 'The Shoah'], well expressed by the document of March 16th, 1998 called We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, signed by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews."

In such a relativist game, it is rather comical to see such a rigid, absolute first principle. But there it is: "The Shoah," the point of reference by which all (and I do mean ALL) things are evaluated.

The lecturer then demonstrates what absurd lengths this is taken to by quoting Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger:

The drama of the Shoah has placed the whole question [of Christian Old Testament hermeneutics] in another light. [The Pontifical Biblical Commission] faced two main problems: After all that has happened, can the Christians continue in their untroubled claim that they are the legitimate heirs of the Bible of Israel? Can they continue with a Christian interpretation of this Bible, or should they rather, respectfully and humbly, abandon a claim, which, in the light of all that has taken place, necessarily smacks of presumption? And here we also find a second problem: Is it perhaps the case that the presentation of the Jews and of the Jewish people in the very text of the New Testament contributed to the creation of a hostility against this people, which favored the ideology of those who wanted to suppress it?”

To which the lecturer adds the notion that Christians are "forever spiritually linked" to the people of the Talmud and in light of "The Shoah" must rework every aspect of Christian religion:

"These are questions, therefore, that induce Christians – provided they have understood the deep significance of the greatest tragedy in Jewish history, and in virtue of the link that spiritually and forever ties the people of the Bible and the Talmud to those baptized in the name of Jesus Christ – to rethink their very identity and their own interpretation of revealed Scripture, and thus to rediscover “the holy root that supports us,” that Israel “after the flesh” (in other words, in history), which the Apostle Paul discusses with the highest theological and existential pathos. The Shoah, from being an obstacle to Jewish-Christian dialogue, has become not only a stimulus to rediscover and to reappraise Israel, its texts and its traditions, enabling Christians to dialogue with the Jews, but also a sting and a key for an analysis and a “work on oneself” that somehow encompasses all components of Christian identity: from the hermeneutics of Scripture to Christology, from ecclesiological reflection even to liturgy ..." (The Shoah as a Shadow upon Jewish-Christian Dialogue and as a Stimulus to It, Massimo Giuliani, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome – November 16th, 2004)

Prof. Massimo Giuliani teaches Jewish Studies and Philosophical Hermeneutics at the University of Trent, Italy.

He has authored several books and articles on contemporary Jewish thought and the Holocaust.

The rest of this remarkable Hasidic philosophical prose and alchemical conjunction of opposites can be read at the following link:

3 comments:

These are good questions. Even more important in my mind is, is a book on these subjects needed? I would say more so than any book already available to Catholics who are wondering what happened to the Church. They will, of course, receive instead, a bunch more books on the latest "secrets of Fatima" speculations which they will, no doubt, dutifully pony up for.

To answer your question, I'm not sure it is feasible or worthwhile. I'm a terrible businessman anyway, so my opinion on that end of things is probably not worth much. I can say that without outside funding, it wouldn't be possible for me to do it right, if at all. A pamphlet, maybe. But I don't think a pamphlet length work could do justice to the topic and could easily be dismissed as "Jew hate." To break through the hypnosis that people are laboring under, it would need to be an exhaustively documented work, I believe.

I appreciate the thought, though. I wish someone more capable and better situated would take on such a project. I pray often for God to raise up strong leaders and for the people to have ears to hear them. But in the absence of such a person or persons, aside from Hoffman and Heimbichner, I guess I'll have to keep slugging away at this project myself.